South Korea has accused Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek of sharing person information with the proprietor of TikTok in China.
“We confirmed DeepSeek speaking with ByteDance,” the South Korean information safety regulator advised Yonhap Information Company.
The nation had already eliminated DeepSeek from app shops over the weekend over information safety considerations.
The Chinese language app triggered shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off world inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was educated at a a lot decrease price than US rivals reminiscent of ChatGPT.
Since then, a number of nations have warned that person information is probably not correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential information sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day affect noticed it shoot to the highest of App Retailer charts within the UK, US and plenty of different nations all over the world – though it now sits far beneath ChatGPT in UK rankings.
In South Korea, it had been downloaded over 1,000,000 occasions earlier than being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Shops on Saturday night.
Present customers can nonetheless entry the app and apply it to an online browser.
The info regulator, the Private Info Safety Fee (PIPC), advised South Korea’s Yonhap Information Company that regardless of discovering a hyperlink between DeepSeek and ByteDance, it was “but to verify what information was transferred and to what extent”.
Critics of the Chinese language state have lengthy argued its Nationwide Intelligence Legislation permits the federal government to entry any information it needs from Chinese language corporations.
Nevertheless, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by plenty of world buyers – and others say the identical regulation permits for the safety of personal corporations and private information.
Fears over person information being despatched to China was one of many causes the US Supreme Court docket upheld a ban on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance.
The US ban is on maintain till 5 April as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to dealer a decision.
Cybersecurity firm Safety Scorecard revealed a weblog on DeepSeek on 10 February which steered “a number of direct references to ByteDance-owned” companies.
“These references recommend deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and efficiency monitoring infrastructure,” it mentioned in its overview of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Safety Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “person behaviour and system metadata [are] probably despatched to ByteDance servers”.
It additionally discovered information “being transmitted to domains linked to Chinese language state-owned entities”.
On Monday, South Korea’s PIPC mentioned it “came upon site visitors generated by third-party information transfers and inadequate transparency in DeepSeek’s privateness coverage”.
It mentioned DeepSeek was cooperating with the regulator, and acknowledged it had didn’t to keep in mind South Korean privateness legal guidelines.
However the regulator suggested customers “train warning and keep away from getting into private info into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already adopted plenty of nations reminiscent of Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities gadgets.
The NEWSTORN has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s guardian firm, Excessive Flyer, for a response.
